“Avoiding or approaching eyes”? Introversion/extraversion affects the gaze-cueing effect

We investigated whether the extra-/introversion personality dimension can influence processing of others’ eye gaze direction and emotional facial expression during a target detection task. On the basis of previous evidence showing that self-reported trait anxiety can affect gaze-cueing with emotional faces, we also verified whether trait anxiety can modulate the influence of intro-/extraversion on behavioral performance. Fearful, happy, angry or neutral faces, with either direct or averted gaze, were presented before the target appeared in spatial locations congruent or incongruent with stimuli’s eye gaze direction. Results showed a significant influence of intra-/extraversion dimension on gaze-cueing effect for angry, happy, and neutral faces with averted gaze. Introverts did not show the gaze congruency effect when viewing angry expressions, but did so with happy and neutral faces; extraverts showed the opposite pattern. Importantly, the influence of intro-/extraversion on gaze-cueing was not mediated by trait anxiety. These findings demonstrated that personality differences can shape processing of interactions between relevant social signals.     

The two sides of the mental clock: the Imaginal HemiSpatial Effect in the healthy brain

When subjects are asked to compare the mental images of two analog clocks telling different times (the mental clock test), they are faster to process angles formed by hands located in the right than in the left half of the dial. In the present paper, we demonstrate that this Imaginal HemiSpatial Effect (IHSE) can be also observed in two modified versions of the mental clock test: in Experiment 1 subjects had to imagine the position occupied by two numbers within a clock face and to judge if the subtended angle was smaller or greater than 90 degrees , while in Experiment 2 subjects were asked to match two imagined positions on a clock face with two visually presented locations. The finding of the IHSE in these tasks suggested that it is a genuine phenomenon related to spatial imagery tasks, and is consistent with recent neuroimaging evidence that the left parietal lobe is mainly involved in the generation of spatial mental images.     

The Grounding of Identities

Philosophia - A popular stance amongst philosophers is one according to which, in Lewis’ words, “identity is utterly simple and unproblematic”. Building from Lewis’ famous...     

Measuring attachment security via the Security Scale: Latent structure,invariance across mothers and fathers and convergent validity

The Security Scale (SS) is a widely used questionnaire measuring attachment towards mother and father in school-aged children. Whilst existing evidence supports concurrent and discriminant validity of the SS, its factorial structure remains largely underexplored. The current study examined the factorial structure of the SS, explored its measurement invariance across mother and father, and evaluated its convergent validity with the Coping Strategies Questionnaire in a sample of 149 Italian children aged 8–10 years. In statistical analyses, we accounted for the ordinal nature of the data and adopted an ad hoc bootstrap procedure for the estimation of measurement invariance. Results supported the factorial validity of the SS and the structural invariance of its underlying construct across parents. Evidence for convergent validity was also found. Overall, the Italian version of the SS is a promising tool to assess attachment in school-aged children.     

Reversing the Trend: a Psychosocial Intervention on Young Immigrants in Sicily

Intervention projects based on providing support for immigrants can offer a number of benefits with regard to the social inclusion of young immigrants. Therefore, the actions suggested in this proposal may not only create a network between institutions and the private sector capable of supporting the intervention of a host country, but may also help to reduce the risk of crime as well as advocating a sense of otherness and integration. The approach to the project, a psychosocial intervention carried out on four young Africans who reached Sicily after crossing the Sicilian Channel on a dilapidated boat, has chiefly been to provide the four individuals with the chance to revisit their original, harrowing voyage, thus allowing them to view the voyage not only as a source of pain and death but also as a source of well-being and mutual understanding. Positive outcomes from the intervention include the satisfaction of the participants and a greater sensitivity towards each other, an awareness of the importance of rules, free time monitoring through utterances, and finally, photographic images for the resulting awareness raising event. The intervention, the only one carried out in Sicilian territory, culminated in the organization of a social visibility day, an event designed to advocate the involvement of local communities and young people. Further, the public event also aimed to raise awareness among the host community to the needs of immigrants, while contributing to discussion on hostile attitudes and closure towards immigrants.     

Multisensory Assessment of Acoustic Comfort Aboard Metros: a Virtual Reality Study

In this study, a multisensory methodology is used to assess acoustic comfort aboard different real‐world metros by means of subjective annoyance and cognitive performance measures. Two experimental conditions were compared: unimodal versus bimodal. Immersive virtual reality was used to simulate journeys aboard metro coaches. Participants performed four tasks (Rey Test, Verbal Fluency, Backward Counting and Auditory Words Discrimination) while listening to metro sounds (unimodal condition) or while listening to metro sounds within a virtual metro coach (bimodal condition). At the end of each journey, participants reported their degree of noise annoyance. The results showed that cognitive performances were worse in the bimodal than in the unimodal condition. Moreover, the bimodal condition affected negatively the capacity to discriminate words and to count backward. However, reported noise annoyance was higher in the unimodal than bimodal condition. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.